“Help,” he said softly, and then, with more strength, “Help!” That was the skeleton key that unlocked his voice, and he began to howl, shouting, “Help! Help!” over and over again, until the entire valley rang with the sound of his fear.
A crow dropped down, through the fog, and landed on the ruler. “Caw,” it said, cocking its head to the side and considering him carefully.
“Are you … are you the Crow Girl?” he gasped.
“Caw.”
“She pushed me. She pushed me and I fell. Can you help me?”
“Caw,” said the crow again, and took off, flying away into the fog.
Avery dangled from his ruler—which was a sturdy, faithful tool but had never been intended to support the full weight of a boy, however small—and wondered how long it would be before he was falling again. Would it hurt less, because he had stopped it for a little while? Or would it hurt more, because now he would have to begin the whole process over again? The shock, the realization that no one was coming to catch him, the dawning comprehension that just because he had fallen twice and been saved both times didn’t mean he’d be saved a third time, no matter how much he wanted to be?
He would have said that falling was the worst thing that had ever happened to him, if not for the slow bruise blossoming on his heart, the bruise with Zib’s wide, unhappy eyes looking back at him in the moment before she’d fallen out of view. He wanted to survive, yes, he wanted to go home, but he didn’t want to do it at the expense of the people he was coming to care about. He didn’t want Zib to be gone. He certainly didn’t want her to be gone believing that he hated her. This was his fault, this was all his fault, and he didn’t know how to fix it.
The air grew colder around him. He felt his fingers starting to slip. Avery strained to keep hold of the ruler, afraid of what might be waiting in the fog below.
“Let go.”
Avery looked wildly around. “Niamh?”
“Trust me,” she said. “Let go.”
Avery did not want to let go. Avery thought he would rather dangle forever than let go, even a little. But Zib was gone, and it was all his fault; if he couldn’t start trusting the people who were left, he was going to fall, just like she did.
Avery let go.
His fall was short, and stopped when he struck something cold and solid and slippery, landing on his bottom. He tried to stand up, and his feet slid out from under him, leaving him seated. Niamh turned to offer him a slight, strained smile. Her hands were raised, and her hair was billowing around her like a wave, even though there was no wind to stir it.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “This is perfectly safe. Just try to enjoy it.”
“Enjoy what?” he asked.
Niamh’s smile grew. She didn’t answer, only sat down on the slippery surface. crows flew out of the fog, roosting all over the two of them, covering them in warm, feathery bodies. Avery looked wildly around, trying to understand what was happening. The crows began flapping their wings, and Avery and Niamh began inching along the surface—ice, it was ice, they were sitting on a long ribbon of ice that curved and twisted like a carnival slide—until the force of the dozens and dozens of flapping wings became enough to propel them along at a greater and greater speed. They slid down the icy ribbon like they were sitting on polished sleds, fast and graceful and secure, Avery’s shriek of dismay accompanying them all the way down.
The ice slide ended at the bottom of the cliffs, dumping them onto the frozen, stony ground. Avery scrambled to his feet, shedding crows in all directions, and looked frantically around. There was nothing but stone, glittering quartz and shimmering opal and a dozen shades of topaz, creating a cruel rainbow of cold. The crows began to spiral together, reforming themselves into the body of the Crow Girl. Niamh sat on a large quartz boulder, head bowed and shoulders shaking, trying to catch her breath. The tips of her fingers and toes were blue from the strain of spinning a ribbon of ice all the way down into the chasm.
Avery barely noticed any of this. He had yet to even realize that his ruler had been lost, left wedged into the cliffs high above. He was spinning in place, scanning the shore. Zib—stupid Zib, who thought she knew everything—was supposed to be somewhere around here. That’s what the Page of Frozen Waters had said, before pushing him over the waterfall. He needed to find Zib. He needed to tell her he was sorry.
She wasn’t there.
“Where is she?” he asked, barely aware that his voice was raising into a wail. A hand touched his shoulder. He stopped, and turned, and looked into the solemn, avian eyes of the Crow Girl.
“You came together, and you won’t find an ending alone,” she said, and her voice was soft, and sad, and more serious than he had ever heard her. “That doesn’t mean you can’t have all the middle your heart can hold. You don’t have to stay here. You don’t have to follow her. The Page of Frozen Waters has her now, and you won’t get her back the way you lost her. Endings are tricky things. Remember, I told you that, when we’d barely met at all. Endings don’t forgive. So have a middle. Let her go.”
Avery gaped at her. “How can you say that?”
“I lied to you.” The Crow Girl looked at him gravely. “I told you the Queen of Swords made me, the same way as she made
